Page 8 of Untouchable
Getting to my feet, I walk over to him and slip into his lap, holding his gaze. “You can tell me.” I don’t know that there’s much he could share that would scare me off.
“I didn’t love Leia,” he states. “I cared for her.” I give a nod. “She wanted to experience intimacy before she passed.”
“You slept with her.”
He shakes his head. “We made love. I helped her to feel the love of a man who could make her feel fulfilled.” I swallow roughly. “I’d never made love to someone before Leia. I’ve been with women, but it was for nothing more than to fulfill a need. There was never emotion involved for me.”
My eyes drop as I process what he’s telling me. I didn’t expect him to be a monk. Hell, I never thought we’d be together, so why shouldn’t he be with other women? But what he did for Leia, giving her that kind of ending, I can admire that.
“I’m really glad you were there for her,” I finally say, wrapping my arms around his neck.
He’s still stiff. “You’re not mad?”
Drawing back, I look at him. “You gave a woman who had a very painful life her last wish. You showed her that life wasn’t all about pain in her last hours. How can I be mad about that?”
“Because I gave her something that should have been yours.” I see that guilt has weighed on him over this.
“Braxton, there is nothing in this world that could have predicted we’d ever be together again, so how could you think that should have been mine?”
He shakes his head. “You just don’t get it, pup. You were always going to be mine; I was always going to be yours. There’s nothing in the universe that will change that on us. Not now, not ever. My heart, my life, is yours. All you have to do is take them both.”
Whoa.
I recognize that he’s been saying this, but there was never such raw emotion in his words before. I hadn’t believed him because he came in, bulldozing his way through my world in just a few minutes and angering me to the point I wanted to kick him.
The sincerity and desire for us to be together can’t be masked anymore. Much as I’d like to say there’s nothing here for us, I can tell there is. In the deep crimson depths of my heart, I know we belong together.
Or we could.
If this stalker would piss off already.
CHAPTER6
Braxton
Watching Jossilyn navigate her way through the readers—giving them what they want yet maintaining some emotional distance—is like watching an acrobat perform stunts you’ll never be able to do. Pure magic.
We spent all of yesterday in the hotel, ordering room service while she wrote for most of the day and then watching movies at night. She had a few minutes to show me how she navigates dealing with social media, and I was exhausted just thinking about all the ins and outs of having a public persona.
I’ve spent most of my life in the shadows. Initially as a boy growing up, wanting to avoid the wrath of my father when a bet didn’t go his way. Soothing his ego when someone would come to collect on his debts, and even more time trying to scrounge up money to help pay those bookies off enough to leave us alone for another week.
By the time I became a pre-teen, I was bigger than most of the men coming to look for money from my father, and I was used to scare the majority of them off until I realized that my size scared him, too. Once I figured that out, I stopped acting as his protection and took my life into my own hands. I joined the high school football team, kept my grades up, and set my eyes on the Army Rangers.
The day I turned eighteen, I enlisted, finished my high school year, and by the time graduation rolled around, I was on a carrier plane set to land in Kandahar Province before my parents even knew I’d left. From that day forward, I held onto nothing of my old life. I took the darkest missions and the most challenging tasks until the Rangers had their sights on me.
After that, it was just paperwork and rigorous training. I had my own unit within three years and created one of the most elite forces in over two decades. We lived in the dark, operated under the radar, and the only reason I’m a civilian now is because of the way we were torn apart when intel got leaked about our mission within the Bradost Mountains in Iraq. With no communication to the outside world, we were ambushed halfway through our trek across the mountain range.
Three of my team members were killed while trying to defend our stance; the rest of us were taken prisoner. For six months, we were tortured, beaten, starved, and locked naked in a cell carved out of the mountainside. Only two of the remaining four of us returned home.
Billy and I spent six months in a VA rehab center in Germany before coming back to the States. He went home to New Mexico while I found a place in Virginia. It was three months later that I had heard Billy ate a bullet. Survivor’s guilt wore on him, and without me there to guide him through, it killed him. As the youngest member on our team, his death agonized me for months until I was asked to help an old Army buddy’s friend with security at a college campus after a shooting that nearly killed his sister.
It was a turning point for me. I stopped drinking and wallowing and began taking on more freelance jobs, which eventually led me to Sophia Hogan and, by association, Jossilyn. While I hate the events that led me to where I am, I don’t think I would trade them for anything because a life without Joss in it is no life at all. Forcing myself to let her go for so many years taught me that. I can’t and won’t do it again.
“Is he the one?” I hear whispered, and I glance down to find Joss and another woman staring up at me before Joss gives a slight nod, and they giggle together. “Could I have a picture of you both?” Her question is directed at Joss, but she’s looking at me.
Confirming with Joss that she’s okay with it, Ena makes the announcement that I am, in fact, the hero Joss wrote about in her bookOur Love Storyand that if anyone wants pictures of the two of us, now is the time.
Since Joss molds herself to my side, I take advantage and cup her cheek, tilt her head up to mine, and lean down to kiss her. Anything to get my lips on this woman, and I’ll take it.